BESE approves additional two-year Common Core transition period

Teachers, parents and students will have a couple more years to transition to the controversial Common Core standards designed to improve academic performance in the state of Louisiana by 2025. This comes after a vote Wednesday by a state education board.

"They finally listened and I'm glad about that. They're slowing this train down. It hasn't been derailed. What we were encouraging them to do is to give us time to implement," said Meladie Munch with the Jefferson Federation of Teachers.

Munch is happy Louisiana's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved a two-year transition to the state's new, rigorous Common Core standards. School letter grades will start on a curved basis -- beginning with scores from next year. And teachers won't have to worry about losing their jobs if their students don't meet new performance expectations.

"Teachers have been lacking professional development opportunities. They have just not been getting the training they feel they need to implement Common Core. The school districts were having to come up with a huge amount of money to implement the online testing component. Kids were complaining about not understanding concepts," said Munch.

State Sen. Conrad Appel supports Common Core. He expected adjustments along the way.

"The goal is to get the children of Louisiana out of the 49th place in the country and get us up to where we should be," said Appel.

"The curriculum is designed by the school district and implemented by the teacher. There are standards. Expectations, but they are not federal."

Louisiana lawmakers agreed to the standards as part of their 2012 education reform package, which didn't get a lot of attention until it began to be implemented.

"The frustrating part for parents is as soon as you think you have an idea of what they're going to do ... they change it again," said state Rep. Cameron Henry.

Henry is glad to see changes being made. He hopes the BESE board will do the same when it comes to parents.

"They'll say they have local control. But St. Tammany Parish is a perfect example. They voted to be out of Common Core and out of the PARC test. Yet they are still implementing it now, because they have to. So local control is not really accurate and parents aren't comfortable with the material. Until BESE addresses those concerns, you're still going to have significant opposition," Henry said.

BESE also plans to review several additional issues, including the compass teacher evaluation system, the charter school renewal and extension process, and student promotion and graduation requirements.

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